Ecovillages

Robert Gilman set out a definition of an ecovillage that was to become a standard:
«human-scale full-featured settlement in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development, and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future.»
You can find a couple of directories of different types of communities
Top 10 eco-communities around Europe shown in the documentary ‘A new we‘
  1. Sieben Linden (Germany-120 residents)
  2. Krishna Valley (Hungary – 150 residents)
  3. Schloss Tonndorf (Germany)
  4. Damanhur (Italy -1.000 residents)
  5. Schloss Glarisegg (Switzerland)
  6. Finca Tierra (La palma, Canary Islands – Spain)
  7. La Borie Noble (France – 100 residents)
  8. Tamera (Portugal – 160 residents)
  9. Valle de sensaciones (Alpujarras, Spain)
  10. Matavenero (Montes de León, Spain – 40 residents)

Sharing communities

This is not the first time I talk about collaborative consumption and I am sure it will not be the last. This movement is growing as the same pace as the sharing phylosophy; the most we can use anything we own, the best for the planet and a highest return for our investment. Economies of scale do not only apply to the big companies but also to the communities, join with others to be stronger, share your knowledge, share your belongings, be part of a community and enjoy the stregth of working together with people with your same concerns.
An overview of the top sharing communities
+ OuiShare – Creative community for the collaborative economy
+ Share Tompkins – Helps folks to share and trade goods in Tompkins, NY
+ Squared NY – Several S2NY organizations
+ Consumo colaborativo – Digital media platform to spread information and best practices to the sharing community, based in Spain
+ Unstash –  Peer-to-peer platform for collaborative consumption
And a great article with the main collaborative consumption projects world wide, can be found here.

Foodscaping-Waterscaping-Solarscaping

If you had a land wouldn’t you want it to be in production rather than being a cost?
We have got use to look at our gardens as something to show and pay for. We pay taxes over them, we pay to water them, we pay for their maintenance and all that is paid back only with some asthetics around our house.
But a piece of land is much more that a beautiful spot, it is life, it is the habitat for wild life, it is an area where you can harvest water, where you can grow food and where you can harvest sunshine and produce your own energy. Why shouldn’t we take advantage of all what Mother Nature gives us for free?

Redisign your green spaces, harvest all you can, change de landscaping for foodscaping, waterscaping, solarscaping, windscaping.
A veg garden and an orchard can be much more beautiful than any grass garden. They will need water, the water you can harvest from the rain which runs down your roof and can be stored and kept in ponds that will not only water your brand new working garden, but also attract life to help your veg garden and your orchard growing. And maybe if you need to automatize the watering or to heat up a little bit your greenhouse or your orchard you might need energy, the energy the sun gives us every single day and is there ready to help us in our work.

Think of your garden as an edible foodscape, a space to harvest water an spot to harvest your energy. Modify the landscapes and transform them into foodscapes, waterscapes, solarscapes, windscapes.

Economic invisibility of nature

What is the price of biodiversity? What’s the value you give to a clean environment against a degradated one? How much is the Amazonas worthed? The clean fresh water? The breathable air?
It all belongs to the commons. It is the gift Mother Nature has given us, but as human social structures become more and more complex, the commons are being taken over by international corporations that without giving a price to the commons are using them to the detriment of the population, in special to the detriment of the poor part of the world population.
Pavan Sukhdev, chairman of TEEB, put it in its own words : ‘You loose nature, you loose the chance of solving poverty’.

Hemp for building

Hemp is a term for fiber and and seed products derived from varieties of the Cannabis plant that has started to be used as a building material.

It’s main properties for building are:

  • Thermal Mass Insulation
  • Negative Carbon
  • Low Density
  • Clean Air
  • High Thermal Resistance
  • High Thermal Inertia
  • Vapor Permeable (breathable)
  • Design Flexibility (adjustable thickness)
  • Fire and Pest Resistant (NO Termites)
  • Significantly Reduce Co2 Emissions
  • Inherently Airtight
  • No Waste
  • No Mold
  • No Termites
  • No Dry Rot
  • Natural Substrates for Plasters and Renders
  • Low Air Infiltration
  • ZERO LAND FILL
  • Energy use is only $0.025c per Square Foot Per Month

Di NO a los productos transgénicos

Los cultivos transgénicos se han ido incorporando a la agricultura sin que haya una discusión o reflexión sobre el impacto de este tipo de semillas en nuestro hábitat, ni los efectos que este tipo de alimentos tendrán en nuestra salud.
Con un consentimiento que procede del desconocimiento más absoluto de cuáles son los efectos secundarios de los productos transgénicos, la sociedad no se pregunta ni se plantea hasta dónde llegan los productos transgénicos. ¿La barra de pan que compras está libre de transgénicos? ¿El chocolate? ¿la carne?…
Damos por hecho que seguimos comprando productos libres de transgénicos igual que hace 30 años y eso no es así. Los productos modificados genéticamente se han incorporado a nuestra cadena alimentaria sin nuestro consentimiento, nadie nos ha preguntado si estamos de acuerdo en que el trigo con que hacen nuestro pan sea transgénico, o si la carne que compramos ha sido alimentada con pienso de origen transgénico, o el azúcar, arroz, patatas….Lamentablemente casi todo lo que comemos, en mayor o menor medida contiene transgénicos.
Por eso, me ha parecido una iniciativa francamente buena el proyecto NON GMO (NO a los productos modificados genéticamente) que apuesta por empresas que certifican que ninguno de sus productos utiliza transgénicos. La ley debería imponer que todos los productos que contienen organismos modificados genéticamente, en algún punto de su cadena de producción, estuviesen marcados de forma clara para que el cliente pudiera evitar su compra, pero ya que la ley apoya los transgénicos y no sabemos qué compramos, seamos los clientes los que demandemos productos libres de transgénicos, apoyando con nuestra compra selectiva a las empresas que apuestan por un cultivo responsable y una alimentación sana.
Os dejo una conferencia de Vandana Shiva sobre el futuro de la alimentación y las semillas.

Electric city

During this summer Yahoo tried to gain ground to Youtube-Google launching a webseries produced and written by Tom Hanks, ‘Electric city‘.
The plot is set in a post-apocalyptic era, where mankind has been reduced to small settlements whose main business is to produce electric power. With fossil and nuclear fuel sources mostly depleted, the communities are dependent on naturally created electricity, be it by air, water, or muscle power (the latter of which is used as a punishment for criminals and other undesirables of this society). Under the motto «All in service to all» everyone must contribute to society’s welfare.
Many things have been written about the future, how each of us envision it. During the seventies and the eighties, the spatial trips were in everyone’s mind and most of the sci-fi literature was about conquering the space. Nowadays we all have other worries:
– Energy scarcity
– Overpopulation
– Environmental collapse
And most of the things written about the next futur, talk about riots, wars, system collapse and fascist regimes.
What has been written still remains in the book’s shelves and the truth is, that future hasn’t yet been written and is upon each of us to write a better future than those ones of riots, wars and collapse, but to do it we have to go further than just imagining it, we have to move, we have to take a step forward and start making changes in our way of life, in our interaction with our habitat, in our habits. 
We need to reduce consumption, to localise the economy, to establish sustainable policies in the natural resources’ extraction and we need to stop poisoning and polluting the place where we all live.